Regions and Cities Names - Alternative Spellings

I noticed that one anonymous user made a spelling change to a city name, orphaned Doneck, then someone else put it back, duplicating the city in the list. I fear the next thing to happen is that another person will write a second article about the same place and decide it isn't in the list at all, so add a third spelling alternative. I do not want to be a revisionist historian, going around and changing all the new names back into the old ones (or vice versa), making a complete idiot of myself and offending the culturally (in)sensitive, so some suggestions are needed about what the cities and regions should (and could) be called before things go too far.

I have already identified the following alternative spellings for several of the Ukrainian cities and regions, such as:

Kiev can also be spelt either informally as Kyiv or more formally as Kyyiv

Also most of the regions are named after their main cities.
Can we please reach a consensus on the regional and city names? Even the CIA and other authorities appear confused on this subject and at odds with the Google popularity contest. I feel I need to make some arbitrary decisions and would prefer not to do so. I would welcome some input from others. -- Huttite 19:51, 21 Jan 2005 (EST)

Ukranians use Одєса while Russians use Одєсса. (One 's' instead of two) I don't know about the transliteration, but inside Ukraine they're trying to make the Ukranians transliterations count. I think it's clearer for a tourist to stick with the way it's written in Ukranian guides, but this means changing the majority of this site--Twopeak

surprises

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